[Talk-GB] Armchair-mapping postcodes

[SK53 on OSM]

On 15/02/2011 17:23, Ed Avis wrote:
> Andy Robinson (blackadder-lists<ajrlists at ...>  writes:
>
>>> Great work!  How can you tell when you have every postcode and is there
>> some way of checking them against the OS OpenData postcode centroids?
>>
>> Just by being systematic. If you have Chillly's codepoint postcode layer
>> sitting over BING its easy in the editor to assign the postcodes as you see
>> them when adding buildings.
> <http://www.raggedred.net/codepoint/>
>
> I see - so you can use your judgement to work out the area of a postcode based
> on its centroid and the streets and buildings nearby.
>
> Since this isn't using any kind of ground survey to check the data, I wonder if
> it would be a suitable task for a bot?  A program making guesses about postcode
> areas might not be any more fallible than a human doing the same task.  Of course
> it could only be done in areas that had already reached a high standard of
> completeness, ideally with buildings traced as well as streets.
>
> Or, perhaps, the robot could make suggestions which a human would then accept or
> reject, so that 95% of the area could be covered, with human assistance for the
> last few tricky bits.
>
This just doesn't work. The example I pointed to has shared 
semi-detached house which have different postcodes: there is no way in 
which any program could work this out, unless it already has 
housenumbers which have been mapped using, /inter alia/, shoe leather. 
Adding postcodes to ground surveyed data is relatively trivial, do not 
assume that the operation is commutative.
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